Recreational trailers for boats, campers, snowmobiles and the like are typically provided with ball-and-socket hitches. The owners of such trailers know the difficulty in backing a hitch-equipped towing vehicle up to a trailer socket in order to get close enough for a convenient manual hitch connection. The mating trailer-side and vehicle-side halves of the hitch are below the rear window of the vehicle, and are not visible to the driver as he backs up. As a result the hitch halves are often left too far apart, leaving the driver with a lot of work once he puts the vehicle in park and gets out to make the hitch connection, or forcing him to get back in the vehicle and try again. Less cautious drivers may damage the vehicle or trailer.
Devices for improving the driver's accuracy in positioning the vehicle-half of the hitch near the trailer-half of the hitch are commonly known as “hitch guides”. U.S. Pat. No. 4,621,432 to Law shows a trailer hook-up guide system in which a sighting fork is mounted on the rear of the vehicle and a flexible sighting pole is securely attached to the jack stand or tongue portion of the trailer with a relatively complicated bracket and/or clamp mechanism. The sighting pole has a lower “tail” centered by a U-shaped bracket below the socket of the trailer hitch; when the tail is struck by the ball hitch on the vehicle, it causes an upper end of the sighting pole to vibrate, signaling the driver that the ball is directly under the trailer hitch socket. The mechanism is relatively complicated to install and detach, and it appears that the fixed sighting pole is subject to breakage, and could interfere with making the hitch connection since the tail is centered under the trailer socket. The goal is apparently to achieve an exact vertical alignment of the trailer socket and hitch ball using the sighting fork and socket-centered sighting pole.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,279,940 to Beavington shows a hitch guide with a vertical rod releasably secured with clamps to the vertical “crank” or jack stand on the trailer, and a horizontal rod slidingly mounted on the upper end of the vertical rod to touch a sticker applied to the rear window of the vehicle when the trailer socket is aligned over the hitch ball. Again, the goal is apparently to achieve an exact vertical alignment between the trailer socket and hitch ball, by mating the small but precise aiming points of the sticker and the tip of the horizontal rod.
A company named Q-Works Corporation sells a two-rod system called “Hitchin'Rods”, in which a first rod with a flat magnetic base is mounted on the flat top surface of the trailer tongue behind the hitch socket, and an identical rod with a flat magnetic base is mounted on a flat surface on top of the ball hitch on the vehicle. The rod on the trailer serves as an alignment marker, while the rod on the ball hitch serves as a vehicle-side alignment aid and additionally is knocked off the ball hitch by the trailer socket when the ball hitch is underneath the socket. One potential problem with this system is visual confusion between the rods. Another potential problem is a hitch ball without a flat top or a top that is iced up, preventing a good connection with the ball-mounted rod. Another drawback is the extra cost of a two-rod system. And, like the other prior hitch guides described above, the operation of the ball-centered second rod appears to rely on achieving an exact vertical alignment with the trailer socket, which the present inventor believes is unrealistically optimistic and may increase the likelihood of damaging the vehicle or trailer.